


Kinbaku

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Selcouth Timestamps [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Aftercare, BDSM, Cuddling, Dom/sub, Domdrop, Established Relationship, Flashbacks, Kinbaku, M/M, PTSD, Rope Bondage, Subdrop, selcouth verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:40:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4282410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“The only thing you’ve ever wanted to catch,” Will reminds him, “you first released.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Repeatedly,” agrees Hannibal. “And yet you came back, time and again, until I could think of no other.” He stretches slowly, palms against his thighs. Rolling his shoulders, he lets the movement work itself up to his neck, tilting his head one way, and then the other.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You’ve done this before.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Yes.”</i>
</p><p>Sometimes things don't go perfectly right. Warning for triggers: this has mention of dom!drop and sub!drop, rope and rope bondage, and flashbacks to child abuse (non-explicit)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kinbaku

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kinneykid3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinneykid3/gifts).



> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

As with every new endeavor, it’s Hannibal’s idea first.

“ _Kinbaku_ ,” he says. “Japanese for ‘tight binding’.”

Will looks above the edge of his book to the young man who stands before him. Dressed in a simple off-white collared shirt, pressed teal slacks and - to Will’s amusement - bare feet, Hannibal holds out his arms, looped over with hemp ropes. Their spiraling lengths shine, well-oiled but not so much that it would not cause irritation when bound against bare skin. Will wonders at the choice.

“I thought perhaps we could learn together,” Hannibal adds with a soft smile. The tandem darkening of his eyes and cheeks seem to swallow the light. “Like tying a lure.”

Will regards him a moment more. Restraints have never before come up in such a blatant way between them. Hannibal has not been one to be particularly enthusiastic about being tied down. In fact, certain grips that Will had tried against his wrists would lead to a jerk in panic or a draining of color from his face.

It’s odd that he would ask, but he is _asking_.

“You assume I need to learn,” Will says, smiling when Hannibal just blinks at him. The boy sucks his lips between his teeth, and releases them with another tilted smile.

“So I did.”

He comes closer, an eager energy coiling up through every step. Flirtatious, curious, seeking neither pain nor even pleasure, but rather riveted by the excitement that new experiences and knowledge have always stirred in him. Hannibal touches his tongue to his incisor as he brings one knee beneath him at a time, and his cheeks flush as he offers the ropes out across his arms.

“Teach me,” he asks.

Will hums, a single low note, and folds his book into his lap, not yet moving to reach for the boy kneeling so obediently before him. Graduation has been kind to him. He has allowed himself to rest, and while he insists on working on summer essays and projects, he has months still before he returns to college, and Will enjoys watching him indulge in less academic pleasures.

But this… this is still unusual.

The book is slid to the arm of the chair and Will leans forward. His fingers are deft and gentle over the rope before he takes it from Hannibal, watching him shiver in anticipation and bite his lip before he sits back on his heels.

“Are you to be a lure, then?” Will asks, amused. “What, pray, are you luring?”

Hannibal’s eyes narrow in delight. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to catch.”

With a breathy laugh, Will circles a loop of hemp around his hand. It’s expensive, soft enough not to tear skin but coarse enough to be felt. The rope is meant for this purpose. He wonders how long Hannibal has considered this to go to such lengths, seeking out a _nawashi_ to buy it from.

“The only thing you’ve ever wanted to catch,” Will reminds him, “you first released.”

“Repeatedly,” agrees Hannibal. “And yet you came back, time and again, until I could think of no other.” He stretches slowly, palms against his thighs. Rolling his shoulders, he lets the movement work itself up to his neck, tilting his head one way, and then the other.

“You’ve done this before.”

“Yes.”

“Then you enjoy it.”

“Yes.”

“Then enjoy it with me,” Hannibal tells him. With a shift no greater than the current of wind produced by a moth’s wings, there is an unsteadiness to his voice. An unbalanced lilt. An uncertainty. It is there and gone so quickly that Will doubts for a moment that it was there at all, rather than his own uncertainty, projected.

“Please,” the boy asks.

Will considers more. Considers how long ago he had learned the art with a friend who had been very happy to just remain a friend. It had been a fun experience between them regardless, knotting each other into pretzels and working out how best to keep the other restrained.

He wonders if it is like riding a bike, if he will simply remember. He wonders why this worries him so much - never once has he hurt a partner when tying them. And he hardly seeks to suspend his boy.

“Hands,” he says, smiling when Hannibal grins and presents them for him, wrists pressing together. The older man shakes his head, gently takes Hannibal’s hands to face wrist up instead, parallel, not pressed. Perhaps they should do it on the bed, where it will be softer, more comfortable, gentler.

Lord.

He hardly knows. Perhaps keeping him away from a place he now sees as safe would do him better, should this experiment turn out poorly.

Carefully, he places the rope against Hannibal’s left wrist, begins the initial twists for a handcuff bind, watching Hannibal instead of the rope, the rope moves on its own when his fingers push it to, but Hannibal…

“Breathe,” Will murmurs, smiles. “Tell me why this.”

Hannibal’s eyes lift enough to return Will’s smile, and then drift low again. Curiosity sharpens his gaze to an attentive squint as he watches the ropes spiral slowly around his wrists.

“It is an art form,” he murmurs, “with a history directly that spans back nearly two centuries, culturally almost a millennium. The intricate knots of priest’s robes,” he says, drifting off a little before shaking his head. “There is a martial art from which this stemmed, used for binding prisoners.”

Will watches as Hannibal presses his tongue past his lips, as a fine crease appears and vanishes between his brows. As if hearing his words echoed, Hannibal takes a breath and releases it slowly.

“I know the history,” Will responds, not unkindly. “Why do you want this for yourself, Hannibal?”

A moment passes, the fine hairs of the rope holding the twists together with little need for knotting. Will adjusts a twist, and Hannibal’s eyes suggest a smile.

“To understand control,” he says, “without lacking it entirely.”

Will raises an eyebrow, and deliberately, though still gently, tugs Hannibal’s wrist, one over the other. It is not the correct knot, but the rope serves to hold him pressed this way as Will watches, as Hannibal’s breathing speeds and he lifts his eyes to Will again.

“Control is hardly present, here, if you are being tied,” Will tells him. “Once hands are out of the way, there is little you can do in a turtle bind. In cross-legged binding, shrimp binding, reverse prayer hands…” Will’s words soften and he unwinds the wrong twist to instead adjust Hannibal’s hands and consider how he will tie him, behind or in front.

“Should I apply any of those, Hannibal, you have very little control. There is a very clear difference between rope submission and other submission. Where in one you may choose to submit, hold yourself and refuse to choose between fight or flight, when you are bound you have no choice. You are bound and held, you are helpless to it. Your mind seeks to fight and flee and you cannot. It is not a choice, but a prison.”

He speaks gently, he works the ropes into another elaborate twist around Hannibal’s hands and watches the way the boy starts to breathe more quickly, though he attempts to hide it behind another smile.

“At times,” he murmurs, “they would add a length around a prisoner’s neck, so that any attempt at struggle would cut short their breath. Certain knots were placed against pressure points, to numb the extremities.”

“Hannibal,” Will says, bringing the boy’s eyes to him again. They are hooded, pupils already swollen wide. If he notices the quickness of his breath, he does nothing to temper it, and Will sets his fingers beneath Hannibal’s chin. “What is your safe word? Say it for me.”

“Pomegranate,” he murmurs.

“Good. Very good.”

Will traces his thumb over Hannibal’s mouth, across cool, dry lips that press in response to the pad of Will’s finger as it passes. Though klaxons sound within Will’s mind with all the rising wail of air raid sirens, it is possible too that what he sees is an early subspace, endorphins and dopamines slowing his metabolism. It is far faster than Will has seen in him before. As he adjusts the ropes and pulls them snug and Hannibal’s voice fills his harsh sigh, Will considers that perhaps Hannibal, without realizing, has found a quicker pathway to that quiet space inside himself.

He equally considers that paths often look the same in the woods, and one often does not know they are lost until it’s too late.

He touches soft against Hannibal’s palm, feels him curl his fingers in response and then keep his eyes down to the twists that bind him, few knots at all holding the rope in place. Will thinks that had they done this properly, had they talked it through and prepared, he would feel better. But Hannibal had come to him in trust, hoping to explore this even a little together before, perhaps, adding it to their repertoire in scenes.

A shiver slips through Hannibal’s entire form, as though cold water had been poured over his head, as though he had been touched with cold hands against the back of his neck. His eyes are wide enough that Will can see the whites around the irises, and his breathing is very quick now, too quick. When he touches Hannibal’s hair gently to try and bring him around, the boy makes a pitiful sound, and Will’s hands immediately tighten against his hands to hold him safe and still.

Will’s grip cuts short Hannibal’s voice, his breath, everything but his pulse and for a precarious moment it seems that too has stopped. His lips part and curve, but no sound comes forth, not even a sigh, a whisper. Hannibal watches the way Will’s hands spread over his own, revealing in flashes past his fingers the interlocking spirals of rope.

Hannibal hears a scream, and his eyes snap shut.

Hannibal hears his name, and it is not Will’s voice that calls to him.

A shiver tears through him, rattling goosebumps across his skin. The ropes pull tighter and Hannibal strains against them, unfocused through the drifts of snow that blind him, the agonies wracked deep in his belly, his whole body, his heart now bound as tight as his wrists. He cannot yell for her. He can’t even make himself breathe.

Crude cords of shredded jute cut into his skin as he kicks away from where he’s bound, hurtling himself to the ground. If he cannot tell her to run, he will rip himself free to get to her. If he cannot rip himself free, he’ll take his hands off in the process.

A snap against the line jerks him back, and Hannibal’s lip curls snarling over gritted teeth as he swings.

More voices, but no anger, and Hannibal wonders how many there are, how many must he fight to get away from before he can reach her. Is she bound too? Is she in pain? Are they hurting her? He hears his name again and cries out, fisting his hands and feeling the ropes dig into his skin. He doesn’t care. He will chew it off it he has to.

There is another grasp against the bindings and Hannibal sobs. He is so little. He is too little. He can’t help. He can’t do anything -

And then the bindings are gone, fallen away like a snake’s shed skin, and Hannibal curls in on himself instead.

Will watches, his own breath coming quickly, eyes wide as he gently sets his small fishing knife away onto the table and moves to kneel beside Hannibal. His hands hover for a moment, just over him, thinking of how hard he had struck, how well he had aimed against his jaw, enough to split Will’s lip and unsteady him.

He touches Hannibal softly again, tighter when he squirms and pulls him up against his chest.

“Hey,” he breathes. “Hannibal, it’s me, it’s Will. I’m here. You’re safe with me, I’m here. I won’t let you go.”

But he had. He had let him go, too deep, too far, into something he was terrified of. He didn’t stop. He didn’t _see_. That is what panics Will the most, makes his blood run cold. That he had betrayed this trust, blatantly, by allowing it to go on. He holds Hannibal closer when the boy shakes against him and gently rocks them both, nose buried in Hannibal’s hair.

Hannibal hears two voices tangled into one, desperate cries from a voice that shatters with fear, soft whispers that resonate down into his bones. He is too cold, too small, too big, too hot. Tender arms hold him securely and fierce strength keeps him captive. He doesn’t know where he is, in two places at once and none at all.

His voice sounds unfamiliar when it quakes free in a wracking sob.

“Breathe,” Will speaks against his cheek. He touches lips to his temple, a kiss to his hair. Smoothing Hannibal’s sweat-slick locks back from his face, Will cradles him close and doesn’t loosen his embrace even as Hannibal tries weakly to pull himself free again.

The words that scatter from Hannibal’s lips, wet with spit and snot, are not in English. Lithuanian, Will knows, but he doesn’t know their translation. He doesn’t need to know their meaning to know their intent. Against him, Hannibal begs, broken words from a broken boy fighting to keep his voice, struggling against demons to grasp for a ghost.

And when Hannibal does speak English again, it is an apology, before he lifts shaking arms around Will in return.

Will sighs his relief against Hannibal’s hair and adjusts to hold him this way too. Whatever age Hannibal imagines himself now, it is much younger than his eighteen years. Will spreads his hands up and down Hannibal’s back, into his hair, over his skin. He kisses against his temple, leaving light smears of blood from his lip in his wake. He waits until Hannibal is breathing more slowly, waits until his clinging is for comfort rather than out of terror. And only then does Will say his name again, bring him back to the now and the here.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I should have seen and I should have said no. I won’t do that again. I will not miss that, again.”

The stark, all-too familiar scent of blood stirs Hannibal’s breath deeper. It is acrid on the back of his tongue, sharp in his nostrils. He draws his nose along Will’s neck and tries to shake the memory of that scent, too, before realizing that he cannot pull away from it.

He pulls away from Will instead, enough to regard him, and red-rimmed eyes widen in fresh horror.

Will is hurt. His lip is swollen, the bruise already darkening onto his cheek. A cut bisects his mouth and gouts dark scarlet onto his chin, curling beneath to trickle down his neck. Hannibal finds his breath has gone from him again, not lost to another time and place, but stolen now in sudden realization for what has happened.

For what he has done to the man who saved his life.

The man he loves.

He lifts a shaking hand to press his palm to Will’s cheek. Will’s skin is almost scalding against the chill that has frozen through his own body, but Hannibal does not take his hand away. Blinking slow, he watches as Will’s pulse works loose another bead of blood from his mouth, and Hannibal’s shoulders curl in a shudder.

“I hurt you.”

Immediately, Will sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and shakes his head.

“Hannibal, it’s fine -”

“It isn’t,” his boy sighs, expression slackening, eyes wide. “I didn’t mean to - Will,” he begs, he pleads. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to - I thought -”

He thought that Will was one of his captors. He thought, for long enough to strike him and wound him, that Will was one of the men who broke him, who took her, who haunts his dreams and rends her to pieces again and again as if she were a hog for slaughter.

Will, who has fought for him, against everything Hannibal could throw into his path.

Will, who has done nothing but support him, and help him to brace against the onslaught of the world around them.

Will, who loves him.

Who he loves.

“Forgive me."

Will blinks wide at the words. With gentle hands he finds Hannibal again and draw him close. Hannibal holds to Will as he nuzzles, kisses, whispers over and over that he is sorry, that he didn't mean to, that he didn't _know_. Slowly, carefully, Will gathers Hannibal into his lap, sighing into his hair, kissing his skin. He stands, taking the boy with him, and walks them both to the bed. Peeling back the sheets to deposit Hannibal into them, Will wipes the cloying blood from his lip as best he can, and climbs into bed beside him.

He rubs heat into cold skin, holds Hannibal's hands between his own and kisses his fingertips. Over and over, as the trembling eases and the little sobbed breaths calm to slower ones.

"Forgive me," Will says then, eyes down, palms against Hannibal before him. "Forgive me my lack of judgement. I should have stopped it. I should have known."

Hannibal pushes his head beneath Will’s chin, tucking in tightly against him. Will can’t see his face, but he can feel the frown pressed against his throat and how it lingers even as Hannibal touches his lips softly upward. They are hardly kisses, too chill to carry that warmth yet. No, he follows the trail of Will’s blood up his throat, his mouth forming silent apologies against the scarlet line that tastes of metal on his tongue. Begging forgiveness as if in prayer, he seeks to clean away the result of his failure, up to Will’s chin, over it, and hesitating against his mouth.

“It was my fault,” he whispers. “All of it.”

Will’s arms tighten around him again as a shiver snaps down the length of Hannibal’s spine, curling him as if in pain. The snows have never melted from this place in Hannibal’s mind. Her screams have never stopped. Only Will has ever been enough to pull him from those dark corners, only Will has ever been the one to cut his confines free.

“I have,” Hannibal says, brows drawn in and creased. “I have done you disservice, thinking myself brave. That I could mistake you for them -” His throat clicks as he swallows, shaking his head. “That I would - have - that I have hurt you -”

Clammy palms set to Will’s chest as Hannibal tries to extricate himself in slow movements, aching down to his sinews, a pain deeper than any his age should feel.

“I failed our contract, by not using my word. I failed you,” he whispers, when his voice will not support anything louder and the structure of his words begin to fail beat by beat, brick by brick. “Let me go, please.”

"No." Will's voice is rough but hardly in anger. He worries, truly, that this endeavor, this game, has broken them both. That alone, in all of this, terrifies him the most. He does not let go of Hannibal but he adjusts his grip to hold him more comfortably as he squirms.

"But I -"

"Asked," Will reminds him. "And I gave."

It would be useless to toss blame or claim it, back and forth. Neither will accept that they are not in the wrong, and Will supposes in their own way they both are. But that hardly matters. What matters, to him, to them, is what this will mean to them both. He leans in to nuzzle against Hannibal as he does every morning, bringing them both back to that safety and warmth and comfort.

"I love you," Will reminds him, one hand up to stroke Hannibal's hair. "I love you and I will not let you go."

Hannibal leans forward against Will. Held flush, chest to chest, they lay back and Hannibal allows his eyes to close. The words fill him, easing the stitch in his side and the throbbing in his hand. He tilts his head into Will’s hand as it passes through his hair again, and touches a kiss to Will’s palm.

“I thought perhaps that it would be easier,” he murmurs, “with you. Were I brave enough, safe enough, I might shine a light into that corner and chase away the darkness. I was not -”

“Stop.”

Hannibal draws a breath, not in fear but in relief, bringing a hand to Will’s chest. He opens just enough buttons that he can skim his fingers beneath, and feel Will’s heart against his palm.

“You are brave,” Will tells him. “More than anyone should ever have to be.”

The boy’s jaw works in a painful swallow, but he doesn’t argue. The shivers that take him now are not in the rush of fight or flight, not in grief, but in the aftermath of adrenaline that surged overpowering through him. Pulled tight enough to snap, the pieces of Hannibal yet remaining settle softly.

An hour passes before he sleeps.

And only then, after clicking his tongue softly for Winston to jump up and curl against his boy, does Will get out from under the covers and pad towards the kitchen. He opens the bottom cupboard and does not close it, for fear of waking Hannibal, and takes out half a bottle of whiskey. In the living room, he takes up his fishing knife again, the tattered remains of the rope and takes those and himself outside to the porch, propping the screen door open with a shoe.

It has not yet gotten dark, but the intense heat of summer has faded to a comfortable warmth now, and Will moves to sit on the bottom step with his feet in the grass.

He should have known better.

He should have known that if his gut screamed _no_ then he ought to have listened. He should have stopped. He should have outright refused. He should have -

Will opens the bottle and tilts it against his lips, hissing at the burn and pleased by it. He reaches back to the pack of cigarettes a few steps above him and takes one up, lighting it after the first three scrapes of sparks.

He thinks of Hannibal’s eyes, excited, initially, to try this. To share it. Something new, something fun for them. He thinks of how he had asked, and in that he allows himself a single forgiveness; had Will denied him in asking, Hannibal would remember that much longer than perhaps an experiment gone wrong in play. That trust, he hopes is still there.

Will takes another long swing from the bottle and presses the filter between his lips. He should have known better. It was, is, will be, always, his job to know better, to make the judgement call, to know when enough is enough.

He hears the desperate pleas, begging whispers for things that Will cannot give Hannibal, things he can see only the shape of in grim outline from the few sentences Hannibal has shared with him about what happened. What Hannibal asks for, Will wants to give him, what he needs, Will wants to provide. He sucks hard enough against the cigarette for the embers to crackle. He can’t give Hannibal this, and the thought sticks in his throat as acrid as the smoke he holds ‘til it burns.

He can cut the ties he bound himself, but not the ones that still hold Hannibal captive.

Will slings the ropes into the grasses. The movement doesn’t make him feel any better than before.

He sets his elbow to his knee and his palm to his face, rubbing his eye until he sees stars. For a moment, he wonders if he should suggest to Hannibal that he seek out help against the horrors that haunt him still. He wonders whether or not Hannibal would actually listen to him if he did.

“Shit,” he hisses, flinging away the cigarette burnt down to the filter. The whiskey burns and numbs his broken lip all at once as he takes another pull and drags himself up to stand. The pain is welcome. The pain is deserved.

The bed is empty when he returns inside, whiskey in one hand and the other down to accept the wet-nosed attention of the dogs. As he looks across the unmade sheets, he stops, bile rising in his throat, and his breath speeds. He shouldn’t have gone outside. He shouldn’t have let Hannibal go. He told him he wouldn’t, he promised, and when Hannibal woke Will wasn’t there -

“Will?”

Hannibal’s voice shines soft light against the litany. He stands in the hall to the bathroom, rubbing alcohol and gauze in hand, dressed down to only his snug boxers. With a gentle movement of his hand, he motions Will towards the chair where he was before.

Will sighs relief, curls his lip into his mouth and releases it as soon as it stings. With a gentle nod, he moves to sit again, careful to settle comfortably, to allow Hannibal the space to straddle him if he wanted to keep close, or lean easily if he did not. He watches Hannibal come nearer, hair still disheveled from the fitful rest he had gotten. He smiles, genuine, apologetic, and Hannibal smiles back.

Carefully, he sets one knee on the chair, then the other, settling in Will’s lap and wetting the gauze with the rubbing alcohol in careful hands, eyes concentrating only on that for the moment, nothing else. When he lifts them, he smiles at Will again.

Will parts his lips obediently for Hannibal to dab at the wound, winces gently at the sting of it, eyes always on his boy.

Another trickle of blood, pale pink, is caught on the gauze. Hannibal is careful, his skilled hands always elegant in all that they do, as delicate now as he can be considering the unavoidable sting of antiseptics. He cleans away the clots from Will’s mouth, studying the wound with particular attention, and seeming satisfied with what he sees, he continues wiping clean Will’s chin, his throat.

“Do your teeth hurt?” he asks, and Will touches his tongue to them before shaking his head. Hannibal hums. “May I see?”

Will opens his mouth, and just as gently as before, Hannibal looks him over, eyes narrowed in concentration. He sets a finger beneath Will’s chin to close his mouth again, adding to the little pile of gauze before taking another strip to touch to his lip again.

“You will not need stitches,” Hannibal decides.

“No?” Will asks him softly, and it’s fond, warm, and his smile much the same. He is tired. He wants to wipe this day away as much as he wants to make sure that the way they both remember it is healthy, does not bring about flashbacks of terror as the rope itself had. He turns his face into Hannibal’s palm and kisses it, eyes closed and sigh long and warm against his skin. “Thank you.”

Hannibal cradles Will’s jaw in his palm, taking the gauze with his other hand and setting it aside. Whiskey and smoke and antiseptics fill the air between them, so Hannibal leans closer, pressing cheek to cheek to breathe in only the smell of Will himself. His sigh across Will’s ear trickles a shiver through the older man.

“Be careful with kissing,” he warns, amusement warming his voice. “You will split it open again.”

“Worth it.”

“So you say, until you’ve bled all over me.”

Running his hand through Will’s hair, Hannibal nuzzles against him, along his cheek, beside his nose, until they rest brow to brow.

“Thank you,” Hannibal says, eyes closed. “Thank you for allowing me to try.”

Will hums, eyes closing as well as they just rest together, his hands seeking warm over Hannibal’s form before him. He strokes him until with a sigh Hannibal arches a little closer and settles deeper in Will’s lap. Neither move, neither speak beyond those words. They just breathe together, find each other again.

It had been such a beautiful revelation when they had realized that they did not need constant proof and definition. When it was enough to wake up to Hannibal and nuzzle him awake on Saturday mornings. When it was enough to join Will in the shower and share the sponge back and forth. When it was enough to just be, quiet and content, together, sharing space and each other.

Will swallows softly but doesn’t speak even then. He projects his adoration, his devotion, his love to his boy through the gentle touches, through their even breathing, through the closeness. Then he turns his head just a little to nuzzle, and smiles when Hannibal nuzzles back.

He only stops the soft brush of nose to nose, lips to lips, in favor of leaning closer. Hannibal spreads his hands along Will’s shoulders before skimming them forward. Warm arms loop around Will’s neck, and Hannibal buries his face against Will’s neck. He is, Will knows, trying to make himself small again, little enough to be held this way, and to feel safe in doing so. Will wraps his own arms around Hannibal’s waist to keep him near.

“Brave boy,” he whispers, easing away Hannibal’s single responsive shudder with a palm against his back.

“Will you take me to bed?”

Will’s hands come up to stroke through his hair, to cup Hannibal’s face as he gently leans in to kiss him, reassuring and warm. He can feel how afraid Hannibal is, of whatever is in his mind, of whatever he feels he has broken, be it himself, and his own sharp edges getting too close, or Will, and terrified that he will not put him back together again.

Will wishes he could tell him that he is alright, that Hannibal is strong, and have him believe it. Instead, he kisses him a little deeper and curls his arms beneath his thighs to lift him when he stands.

He holds Hannibal that way, feeling his legs wind around his hips, and nuzzles him that way too. He will take him to bed. He will touch and kiss and remind him, for however long it takes, that he will not leave, that they are doing this together, always.

Will turns to carry Hannibal back to bed, lays him flat and lays atop him, holding himself up over his boy on bent arms, lips seeking against his soft cheek, against the corner of his eye.

Hannibal squirms a little, not in discomfort, only to settle into the familiar mattress and beneath the man he knows better than himself. A faint smile tugs at his eyes, not yet enough to reach his lips, but Will can hear it in his voice.

“You will bleed on me,” he murmurs.

“Should I stop?”

“No,” sighs Hannibal, allowing his eyes to close again as Will continues to touch kisses to temple and brow, to his hairline and just in front of his ear. “It is swollen. You should put ice on it.”

“Later,” Will murmurs, also smiling, delighted by his little doctor, by the boy who is so quickly becoming a man, and who is doing it on his own, proudly, well, with honor and dignity. Will is privileged, he thinks, to be able to see him grow, to be allowed to see it happen. He loves him.

He kisses down to Hannibal’s neck, tickling stubble over pale sensitive skin until Hannibal arches up and Will tastes the slight spike in his pulse. He could kiss him for hours, just this, just letting his lips memorize the curves and sinews, his nose map soft lines down Hannibal’s skin. He loves him.

Every sigh between them carries an apology. _I should not have asked_. _I should have stopped_. _I should have used my word_. _I should have known_. Each kiss between carries forgiveness.

Hannibal curls a leg against Will’s hip, looping it over his calf to keep him close. Careful hands work through dark curls and skim to his back, to feel the older man’s shoulders move with restraint and quiet power. As kisses drift aimless and intentional over every part of Hannibal that is bared to him, he revels in Will’s calm authority, born of certainty that when Hannibal cannot find himself, he will.

Hannibal believes him.

He knows where he is now, without question, grounded by the warm chest against his own as Will lowers himself, held steady by the familiar oaken burn of whiskey on Will’s lips. He knows the springs that creak beneath them, the sheets that catch against their feet. He knows the movement of air against the screens and the sleeping sounds of dogs.

He is home. And he is safe.

Will presses a kiss, lingering and long, over Hannibal’s heart and settles with his head against it with a sigh, content to just lie together this way, close, gentle. He is dozing by the time Hannibal moves his hand again, carding through Will’s hair. With a slow drawn breath, Will stretches and moves to rest alongside Hannibal, head on the same pillow, eyes barely open now as he lies close enough to feel Hannibal’s breath against his lips.

“I love you,” Hannibal whispers, and Will smiles, pressing his lips together before parting them with his tongue.

“I love you,” he replies, reaching out to rest an arm heavy against Hannibal’s side and draw him nearer, turning onto his own back now so that Hannibal can snuggle up on top, head beneath Will’s chin and arms pressed warm between them against Will’s chest.


End file.
